“I’ve been trying to pick fighters.” The Guild Master declared. “They are a bit trickier to catch, but I reckon the more we do, the more aggressive the remaining will be.”
The guild master might be a tad manipulative at times, but when it came to organization, he was a master. He had quickly started putting my plan into effect, capturing one person after another. He went specifically for Adventurers, soldiers, and guards. Once these men woke up again, they would both have the mental fortitude to deal with what happened, but also the knowledge to assist in the future.
No one seemed to recall much more than falling into a dream-like state. Did Elaya use the Siren to obtain her goals? That certainly seemed like a possibility. The Siren could have easily lulled everyone in the city into a deep sleep, allowing Elaya to insert the karmic infections into their souls. Since they didn’t remember anything, I’d be waking the children up last. They’d already have their mothers and fathers around, and thus not experience any trauma whatsoever.
At first, the Guild Master and Ruby went out and brought back a person every ten minutes or so. Meanwhile, Alysia took her human form and helped restrain the townsfolk while I used Mimic to adjust their karmic influence. It was a slow process. It wasn’t just a matter of finding the right people, but also doing it without letting the crowds become alerted. Once they knew we were here, they would attack.
Although the people in the city were being used to produce miasma, they were also being used to protect the city as well. They were the dungeon’s eyes and ears, alerting them to any threat. Eventually, the dungeon would notice something was happening and respond, but I wanted to push that time off as long as possible, so some subterfuge was in order. If they did get alerted, it’d be difficult to cure them, let alone preventing any from getting hurt.
Thankfully, many of the people woke up soon after being cured of their infection. Once they woke up, they volunteered to begin helping. Naturally, the guards weren’t as skilled as the Guild Master, so at first, I waited until there was an adequate group to make a small team. However, as more teams were sent out, more people were brought back more quickly. Some remained behind to restrain the captured while I continued to cure them one at a time.
We started to set up a triage unit, spreading out to the entire Adventuring Guild, which had been expanded and was now a fairly massive building complete with a full bar, rooms, offices, and hospital. I went from infected to infected, restoring their minds one at a time as fast as I could. Even with them getting all the wait period out of the way, I could only move so fast. It took about two minutes per person to heal them. Although my mana regeneration had become impressive, I still found it slowly wearing down from the continuous use. I occasionally drank some of my remaining stores of Waters of Life, but I couldn’t keep going forever.
That said, the Adventuring Guild slowly became crowded as more and more people awakened and became eager to get to work. This was a hardy group of people. Chalm had been destroyed twice now, and they wouldn’t hesitate to build it all back from scratch if they had to. These were my people, and as I saw them busily working, I felt a sense of pride.
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